Exercise is really the best medicine - motivation to continue

I have first written about struggle with high blood pressure in October 2005, about how the doctor wanted to put me on hypertension medication. I told the doctor, if I start taking those medicine, I may have to take them for life, and that I wanted to try exercise and diet first. I did and eventually the doctor told me he would not even consider me as pre-hypertensive.

Since then, my blood pressure have been fluctuating around the normal 120/88. Recently I have started an exercise regime of the following daily ritual - 5-10 minutes of warm up on the recumbent bike and 30 minutes of brisk walking on the threadmill at a rate which is close to the maximum heart rate for my age group.

The results were the measured heart rate were consistently below the normal 80/120. For example, I just measured with the heart rate and it was only 110/70

As such, I believe exercise was the best medicine for maintaining a healthy heart rate and for cardiovascular health.

However, exercise may be dull and monotonous and my motivation to continue is

1. exercise in step to the beat of a nice song or music
2. keep in mind that exercise keeps away hypertension and other cardiovascular problems, diabetes and cancer. Image those horrible medicine I would have to otherwise take if not for exercise.

Food for hypertension - low salt diet

It is well known that people wanting to lower their blood pressure should follow a low-salt (more accurately, low-sodium) diet regime. Here are some ways I have used successfully to keep my blood pressure in the 120/80 normal region:

1. When not cooking myself and eating out and being unable to control the amount of salt or sodium in the food I eat, what I do is have at least one meal which is mainly fruit based as many fruit have very low sodium content plus high potassium content.

Sodium and Potassium levels are in a kind of zero-sum situation with higher Potassium level being compensated with a lower Sodium level.

2. When cooking myself, by substituting salt with garlic, onions and spice, low salt dishes can be low-salt and yet tasty.

Related posts:
Food for hypertension: Beetroot juice
My (successful) struggle against borderline hypertension
Exercise regime to control blood pressure
Zero cost and very effective "threadmill exercise machine"
Sleep the best medicine for hardened arteries
Another weapon in the arsenal against hypertension

Food for hypertension - beetroot juice

Natural remedy for high blood pressure - drink beetroot juice. Want to bring down your blood pressure? Drink beetroot juice.

Amrita Ahluwalia, Professor of Vascular Pharmacology at Barts and the London School of Medicine and Dentistry researching the effect of drinking beetroot juice or taking nitrate tablets have shown that both brought down blood pressure within 24 hours. Apparently, the higher the blood pressure, the greater the magnitude of decrease in blood pressure. Their research paper was published the US journal Hypertension

It seemed the nitrate in the beetroot juice when eaten is changed to nitric oxide gas
and this gas keeps the blood vessels open and relaxed and thus reduces the blood pressure.

Beetroot at Amazon

Strategy to reduce salt consumption and blood pressure

The doctor has taken me off the status of pre-hypertension. However, I still need to control salt intake to control the blood pressure.

I am a widower plus am too lazy to cook myself. I take my normal meal once a day in a restaurant where I do not have control over how much salt be in my daily meal, normally in the mid-morning. I then take only fruits in the afternoon and sometimes soy milk for the protein. Both fruits and soy bean milk has no or very negligible salt. That is how I reduce my salt consumption

Opera best medicine for the heart

Photo of Luciano Pavarotti (Opera) courtesy of Pirlouiiiit

This another of the best medicine series. In this case it is the right kind of music is good medicine for the heart.

Dr. Luciano Bernardi led a team of researchers from Pavia University, Italy, in a study of the effects of five random tracks of classical music on 24 healthy volunteer subjects by monitoring how their body respond to the music. The music include selections from Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, Nessun Dorma, an aria from Puccini's Turandot, Bach's cantata Number 169, Nabucco: Va Pensiero and Libiamo ne'lieti calici from La Traviata.

The researchers found that musical crescendo (gradual volume increase) stimulated the body which caused narrowing of blood vessels under the skin, increased blood pressure and heart rate and increased respiratory rates. On the other hand, diminuendos (gradual volume decreases) caused the opposite, that is, relaxation which led to slowed heart rate and lowered blood pressure. Operatic music which alternates from fast to slow was found to be the best for the heart and blood circulation.

Source: BBC News: Opera 'is music for the heart'

Videos of classical music

Beethoven's Ninth Symphony

Exercise regime to control blood pressure and diabetes

I had a scare many months back. The doctor said my blood pressure was 150 over 90. The next day he said it was 150 over 100. He said I have high blood pressure. He wanted to put me on hypertension medication. I said if I start, I will have to take the hypertension medicine for life. I negotiated to try exercise and diet control.

I first tried cooking my food using no salt and only garlic, onions and spices like kunyit (Curcuma longa or tumeric), pepper and oregano. I cooked with oats instead of rice as it was easier to cook. I exercise only sparingly. It helped but my blood electrolyte (sodium) went down.

Next I tried exercise more regularly. It worked. My blood pressure is now under control. However, exercises are very dull. What I did was to put on the music and march up and down following the beat of the music. It is just like soldiers marching or dancing to the beat of the music. It becomes more enjoyable and not dull. When I saw that it had a good effect on the blood pressure and heart beat (pulse) rate, I had extra motivation to exercise plus I know exercise also helps to keep diabetes at bay and lowers the resting heart beat rate. Now, motivated by the positive results, I exercise for half and hour everyday and believe me, it is not dull. It has become enjoyable.

This is the exercise regime I followed: I had downloaded songs into appropriate folders in my computer arranged according the how fast are the beat, starting with the slow ones and increasing with tempo. When it is time to exercise, I opened the folder and played the songs with Windows Media Player. I then march or jog up and down the stairs according to the music. The music not only keeps me entertained, motivated and help regulate the rate I walked up and down the staircase, it also keeps the time. I now know how long I exercised depending on which song in the playlist I stopped exercising. At the moment I am able to exercise up to Maybellene by Chuck Berry which means I have exercised for slightly more than half and hour. I also check the blood pressure and heart beat rate with a blood pressure monitor immediately after the end of the exercis and it showed that when I exercise up to Maybellene by Chuck Berry, I have achieved 97% of my maximum heart beat rate.

This is the playlist I used:
Respect by Aretha Franklin
I wanna hold your hands by the Beetles
She loves you by the Beetles
Satisfaction by the Rolling Stones
Good Vibrations by the Beach Boys
Good Vibrations by Chuck Berry
What's I do by Ray Charles
Blowing in the wind by Bob Dylan
Maybellene by Chuck Berry
Hound Dog by Elvis Presley
Whole lotta shakin' going on by Jerry Lee Lewis
Sunshine of your love by the Cream
Jail House Rock by Elvis Presley

So far I had been successful in exercising right up to Maybellene by Chuck Berry which has an extremely fast beat and I practically have to run up and down the stairs and it induced my heart beat rate up to 155 beats per minute which is a little bit below the maximum heart beat rate of 160 for a sixty year old (220 - age = 220 - 60 = 160).

Sleep best medicine - hardened arteries

If you don't want to suffer the fate of hardened (calcified) arteries which also lead to cardiovascular diseases (hypertension of high blood pressure), do not skimp on restful sleep. According to a study led by Dr. Diane Lauderdale of the University of Chicago, getting enough sleep is important for good cardiovascular health. In the study, the researchers subjected to 2 CT scans to access the built-up of calcium in the arteries five years apart. In the first CT scan, none of the subjects had any calcification in their arteries, but the picture changed 5 years later with 61 of them showing calcification in their arteries. Calcification was least among those who regularly sleep more than 7 hours and greatest for those who sleep less than 5 hours nightly.

Possible explanation - high blood pressure increases calcification and blood pressure is lowered during sleep. So less sleep may lead to more hours of high blood pressure and therefore calcification, while the reversed is true for more sleep.

Another possible explanation may be stress hormones like cortisol which is related to decreased sleep and increased calcification.

Source:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7796922.stm

Easy weight control tip: eat slowing

Obesity is a major health problem giving rise to ill health like diabetes, cardiovascular diseases like hypertension (high blood pressure), heart attacks and strokes. Many go to great length to control weight like dieting, going to gym for exercise, etc. There is one easy thing weight control tip - eat slowly.

According to an Osaka University research which studied the relationship of eating speed, feelings of "fullness and being overweight, they found fast eaters to be 84% more likely to be overweight than those who eat slowly. This tendency is even more remarkable for women where women who eat fast are two times more likely to be overweight. For those who wolf down their meals are 3 times more likely to be overweight. So if you want to slim down, eat slowly and take your time to chew your food thoroughly.

Source: BBC News (Health)

Zero cost and very effective treadmill (exercise machine)

It is well know that exercise can help keep diabetes and cardiovascular disorder like hypertension (high blood pressure) at bay. I belong to the high risk group for both. 2 of my cousins and an uncle died of ruptured blood vessel in the brain and another cousin had been taking medicine for 20 years to control his blood pressure. My father had diabetes and suffered a stroke. I am fortunate to be not diabetic. Since retirement, I had become an Internet addict and had spend most of my waking hours sedentary in front of the computer. Probably because of lack of exercise, I had a scare recently. My blood pressure was 150 over 90. One week later, a second measurement showed it to be 150 over 100 putting me in stage 1 hypertension. It is not that I had no exercise at all. I had been joining a group in low impact aerobic exercise. However, the doctor said that was not enough.

So now what I do is to is turned on the video of that low impact aerobic exercise and walk to the beat of the music



and walk up and down the staircase

This photo belong to Bashar Al-Ba'noon

Presto, I have a cost free exercise machine which is better than a treadmill. It is the one of the best exercise machine I ever have. Not only it didn't cost me a cent, it is also fun to walk up and down the staircase to the beat of the music. It is not boring and very effective. Within just 2 minutes I will be sweating and slightly breathless which is exactly the type of exercise I need. And my blood pressure is now lower.

Caution: Before embarking on any program of strenuous exercises, consult your doctor. Take care when going up and down staircase to avoid fall which can cause injuries. I slide my hands over the banister as I tread up and down the staircase so I can stabilize myself in case I become unbalanced

Blood Pressure Monitors: Importance of monitoring blood pressure

Blood Pressure Facts and Figures

Your heart needs to pump blood via the arteries, arterioles, capillaries, and veins to the rest of the body to supply oxygen, nutrients and other essentials for health and maintain life. Obviously, it would take fluid (liquid) pressure to be able to do that through these narrow vessels, and the blood pressure needed would be different depending on which part of the cardiovascular system it happened to be at. Now when doctor talk about blood pressure, what they refer to arterial pressure. Arterial blood pressure is the blood pressure in the larger arteries. Arteries are the blood vessels which take blood away from the heart while veins are those blood vessels that take blood back to the heart.

Why it is important to monitor blood pressure

It is important to maintain normal blood pressure which is generally is accepted as an average systolic blood pressure of 120 mm Hg (16 kPa or 2.32 psi)and an average diastolic pressure of less than 80 mm Hg (10 kPa or 1.55 psi). Systolic blood pressure is the maximum blood pressure in the arteries which normally will be near the beginning of the cardiac cycle (cardiac cycle is that repetitive period between the beginning of the flow of blood of one heartbeat to the beginning of the next) while the diastolic arterial pressure is the lowest pressure (at the resting phase of the cardiac cycle). Diastolic arterial pressure is the minimum pressure (resting phase) of the cardiac cycle). The diagram, taken from Wikipedia which is copyright under the GNU license should make it clearer:



The worst case is when the blood pressure is higher than normal which depending on the degree, can be either called pre-hypertension (systolic blood pressure above 120 mm Hg but systolic pressure below 140 mm Hg.) This frequently progress to hypertension or just "high blood pressure (when blood pressure is chronically high) is more problematic and can cause many medical problems like kidney failure, strokes, heart attacks, heart failure and arterial aneurysm. Because of this, it is important to regularly monitor the blood pressure.

Methods to monitor blood pressure

There are various kinds of blood pressure monitor in the market. There are manual blood pressure monitor where you have to use a pressure pump to manually inflate a band placed around the arm to control the blood flow.

There are also blood pressure monitors which uses some power source such as batteries or the normal electrical power supplies by your electrical power provider. Many doctors in my country uses the manual blood pressure monitor which uses a sphygmomanometer with a glass tube containing Mercury (Hg) and the doctors will have to figure out which uses the height of a column of mercury to reflect the circulating pressure (for the untrained, this can be difficult plus that tube of mercury is cumbersome and mercury is toxic)

The vast majority of residents in my country (in fact, I believe, the whole world) who monitor their blood pressure themselves at home uses digital blood pressure monitors as it is much easier to use (read). The blood pressure values is displayed as 2 numbers and it is a breeze to read off the systolic blood pressure and the Systolic blood pressure the diastolic blood pressure can simply be read off from those digital numbers (see photo below):

Photo of digital blood pressure monitor is property of Adrian Purser

.

I myself have a simple digital blood pressure monitor, but my son-in-law have an even more elaborate (and of course more expensive) digital blood monitor. It is good to have one for your home especially if you have hypertension (high blood pressure) or pre-hypertension.

Rolled oats, quick cooking, instant: What is the difference?

Until recently, I have been cooking and eating rolled oats for breakfast. I find it helped keep my blood cholesterol level down, even though there seemed to be a genetic tendency toward high cholesterol as seen in my siblings. However, it appeared to me that rolled oats are getting more and more difficult to find. It is much easier to buy quick cooking oats or instant oats.

I have always tried to avoid highly processed food wherever possible. So I took the trouble to contact a market leader oats manufacturer to ask about the difference between rolled oats, quick cooking oats and instant oats. I was told that the only difference is the degree in the size of the oats to which they have been reduced. Instant oats are ground or cut to a much smaller size than quick cooking.

So if that is true, it is only the degree of physical processing that the oats had been subject to. Physical processing like grinding or cutting the oats are not going to change its chemical composition, so it appear pretty harmless to me. With this knowledge, I am now less cautious about buying quick cooking oats or instant oats.

I will check with the other oats manufacturer to see if I get the same answer. If they all tell me the same thing, I will have no hesitation in buying instant cooking oats, for they will be more environmentally friendly as they take less cooking time, thus would be more energy efficient plus they save time.

Exercise can lower High Blood Pressure

I remembered reading an article in the Readers Digest that exercise can help lower high blood pressure. Here is another one that mentioned regular aerobic exercise reduces resting blood pressure in people who have hypertension by an average of 11 points off the top number (systolic) and 9 points off the bottom number (diastolic)
Taking the Pressure Off: How Exercise Can Lower High Blood Pressure

Here are a few more:
Exercise can lower blood pressure
Why is being active good for you?
High Blood Pressure: Things You Can Do to Help Lower Yours
Blood Pressure and Exercise

I have tested for my blood pressure a few times, and each time I was told my blood pressure is 120 over 90. This (90) puts me in the boderline high blood pressure group. I need to exercise.

See also My struggle against boderline high blood pressure
Another weapon in the arsenal against high blood
Using food to control cholesterol

Books from Amazon

Guide to Contented Hearts: Cardiac Risk Management : Cholesterol, High Blood Pressure Exercise, Stress, Weight, Diet

Controlling High Blood Pressure the Natural Way